Washington Extra – New Year state of mind

On Capitol Hill, the new 112th Congress will start its 2-year run that will end after the 2012 presidential election. (For numerologists — that’s an awful lot of 2s).

Today was Nancy Pelosi’s last day as the first Madam Speaker. The most powerful woman in American politics and second in line to the presidency turns into House minority leader next. Her exit line: “No regrets.”

Tomorrow will be John Boehner’s first day as speaker when Republicans take control of the House and the new Tea Partiers get seated. We’ll be watching for tears of joy.

House Republicans will likely approve scrapping health care reform at a Jan. 12 vote, but a repeal was unlikely to succeed since Democrats still control the Senate and can block it.

President Obama has returned from Hawaii and it’s back to dealing with Congress and world leaders. He meets French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Jan. 10, will they go to Ben’s Chili Bowl for a half-smoke? (It’s the only smoke for Obama these days since he gave up cigarettes).

Here are our top stories from Washington today…

Republicans seek to bleed Obama’s health reform

Although Senate Democrats can probably rebuff any attempt to repeal the president’s healthcare overhaul, House Republicans say they will try to choke off its funding and delay its implementation. “They are not going to get what they want on funding for healthcare. The House is not going to give it to them,” said a senior Republican Senate aide.

U.S. military programs will not necessarily be exempt from sharp spending cuts that Republicans in the House of Representatives plan to put forward in coming months, incoming House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said. House Republicans have previously said defense and domestic security programs would be exempt from their efforts to trim $100 billion from the U.S. budget.

Even before President Obama signed food safety legislation, congressional Republicans were promising a fight over funding it. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calls it “the most significant food-safety law of the last 100 years.” But some Republicans have questioned the necessity and cost of the overhaul — estimated at $1.4 billion over five years — and have warned that the administration could face a tough fight to fund provisions designed to prevent foodborne illness outbreaks.

The Federal Reserve felt at its December meeting that the economy still needed help despite signs of strength, according to minutes that showed little appetite to trim bond-buying plans. The rather dovish tone of the minutes suggested anyone thinking the central bank might curtail its controversial bond-buying plans may be getting ahead of themselves. “There is no indication that members are inclined to curtail the program,” said Eric Green, chief economist at TD Securities. “The Fed will follow through with the $600 billion.”

For more of this story by Pedro da Costa and Mark Felsenthal, read here.

Sudan vote tests Obama’s Africa diplomacy

South Sudan’s independence referendum on Sunday marks the start of a new test for U.S. diplomacy in the region, which analysts say could yet present President Obama with his “Rwanda moment” if violence explodes in its wake. U.S. officials are cautiously optimistic about the vote, which is expected to see southern Sudan opt to split off as an independent country in the last step of a 2005 peace deal that ended one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars.

Air bags and the economic recession have contributed to the biggest drop in road deaths in the United States since World War II, researchers said. Changes in driving patterns and safety features both contributed to a 22 percent decline in road deaths between 2005 and 2009, according to a report that studied federal data looking for the causes associated with fatal crashes.

Nancy Pelosi spent her final full day as speaker of the House of Representatives saying she had “no regrets.” “I don’t really look back. I look forward,” said Pelosi, who as speaker became the most powerful woman ever in American politics. “When our Republican colleagues have positive solutions, again, they will have a willing partner (in Democrats) in solving problems for the American people,” Pelosi said.

Twitter pals Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took their chummy online relationship into the New Year with a series of new tweets. “Can’t wait to see you again — maybe skiing?” the actor wrote Tuesday in reply to Medvedev’s wishes for success after Schwarzenegger stepped down from his governor’s post due to term limits.

1. By default, every criticism needs to come with the alterative.
Under the broken system below,

(a) Inaction cost, $9trillion over the next decade, ((Some of CBO analysis : While the costs of the financial bailouts and economic stimulus bills are staggering, they are only a fraction of the coming costs from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that each year Medicaid will expand by 7 percent, Medicare by 6 percent, and Social Security by 5 percent. These programs face a 75-year shortfall of $43 trillion–60 times greater than the gross cost of the $700 billion TARP financial bailout)).

Under the previous broken system, health costs will skyrocket, leading to more personal, corporate, and governmental bankruptcy.

(b) The insurers set up a monopoly via consolidation violating an anti-trust law.

(c) The biggest 10 healthcare providers are driven mostly to please Wall Street and must show growing profits every three months in their reports to wall Street or their stocks values go down. So healthcare prices climb at an unreasonable rate at the expense of everyone involved.

Can the reps show me the best possible breakthrough ? Just return to the failed Bush policy based on trickle-down economics ? :

“If the rich aren’t getting richer neither are the poor! The wealthy create companies and jobs; the more they have the more they can spend and that eventually filters down to the rest of us.”

If so, can you explain to me why the U.S. economy was on the brink of complete collapse just like Lehman Brothers in 2008 ?

And the reps claimed earlier : Are you listening to people ?

(a) The vast majority of the PEOPLE wanted the public option that the House passed and a majority of the Senate favored, but it couldn’t get past the Republican filibuster.

(b) The biggest concern about the economy is a job market, (according to CNN polling, voters said that unemployment is roughly twice as important as all other top issues combined.)

Can the reps also explain to me why they aren’t listening to people ?

Looks as if the reps are set to drag the U.S. economy into another failed Bush era via the ransom deal, repeal of ACA.
( Looks as if the reps are Glorifying the culture of corruption as the trickle-down economics )